It began with folding chairs.
Not stone, not brass—just wood and patience.
Oren, Halda, and a dozen volunteers set them up in a wide crescent beneath the willow trees of the Commons, where the morning sun painted everything in pale gold. At the center stood a plain stool. No elevation. No table. No gavel.
"One voice at a time," Halda said as she paced the arc. "But every voice will be heard."
The first to speak was a tanner with a stitched glove in hand. He spoke of old union conflicts, the cuts left in his father’s ledger, and the neighbor who took him in after the last strike. He ended with, "I want to write his name down. Somewhere it stays."
We nodded. Mina etched it on the first leaf of the Circle’s record book.
Next came a boy with a stammer and a drawing of a bridge. He didn’t
